Thriller – BG's Reads

August 5, 2024

The Guest by Alan Nayes

I love science fiction. Whether it’s a subject that expands or is based on an existing premise or theory, or something that’s completely fabricated, as long as the author makes it fly off the page as believable while reading. I’ll get on that ride till the end. Love sic-fi. This title, The Guest by Alan Nayes is a great read!

This is based on an existing premise, with a twist of what if. The Voyager I probe, launched in September of 1977, has spent over 45 years in space. Mentioned in my December 2021 post, Fire & Ice by Natalie Starkey, Voyager I was sent to explore the outer planets, Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus. Voyager is now currently continuing its journey beyond our planets and the outer limits of the Sun’s sphere of influence, sending back images as it travels. So, when I became aware of this title, I had to give it a read.

As the novel begins, it’s late evening at NASA Voyager Control Center, when an anomaly is noticed by a doctorate candidate, Aarush Patel and the head of the Center, Dr Kayla Storm. Voyager I, now in interstellar space, beyond the gravitational pull of the sun, had started to decelerate, and had doubled in weight – how was this possible. Then the sensors showed Voyager was beginning to alter its course, again how was this possible? Voyager I, a body travelling at constant speed in a straight line would continue to do so unless disturbed by an outside force – they needed more data of Voyager’s surroundings. Then they lost contact.

Voyager begins transmitting again a few days later. It turned around, heading back on the exact path it took, at an alarming speed, thousands of miles per second, while maintaining its structural integrity. The scientists at the control center didn’t know how this was possible. An astrobiologist attending the control center’s media briefing raises a theory – Voyager has encountered and has been taken over by an alien species and the Voyager has been altered somehow – its components changed to withstand the journey back to Earth in days rather than years – changed to a strange and unfamiliar molecular combination of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen.

Many groups were involved with monitoring Voyager at this point, with these new developments, the press, global scientists, the United Nations, and the military. They were all monitoring Voyager’s path that took decades to accomplish, being spanned in a matter of weeks. The once sleepy and dull Voyager project spanning decades in length, now became very interesting and perplexing. Indeed, when Voyager finally lands back on Earth, in the deserts of Arizona, the astrobiologist’s theory proves right, the probe did have an alien presence on board.

This alien had plans for the planet that did not include its current inhabitants. With its advanced technology, it begins transforming the planet into an ecosystem (atmosphere and temperature) that can support its alien life and is deadly to Earth lifeforms. The military and scientists try everything in their present arsenals to combat this alien but are unsuccessful. Their military force and technologies are completely inferior to the alien that seems unstoppable. Thier only hope is to figure out the base carbon-oxygen-hydrogen formula of their technology and then counter it.

This novel was really an interesting, thriller of a sci-fi. The conflict between the military and the science community with the impending, looming threat was intense. It really makes you think about this home of ours, the lands we have invaded in the past and if we have a right to this planet at all – if might is right and to the victor the spoils. And Voyager I? Where is it right now? Both probes are still out there travelling through the vastness of interstellar space in communication with Earth. You can track both Voyager I and II here Voyager – Mission Status (nasa.gov) and I hope you give The Guest by Alan Nayes a read!

October 31, 2022

When We Were Birds by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo

Halloween month – graveyards, the dead, the unexplained. The title When We Were Birds by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo, takes place on the Caribbean island of Trinidad, the locations and places within the novel are fiction, however. The author is from Trinidad and Tobago – it’s her first novel. I was looking forward to reading this one, since my family is from Trinidad.

This mystical novel opens as an elder, Catherine, tells her granddaughter, Yejide, how the forest changed during a war with animals and man, with parrots changing to the Corbeaux – flesh-eating birds, to balance the living and the dead.

Darwin, a young man from a village in the country, travels to the city of Port Angeles, for the first time to find work at the island’s government office. He is assigned to a cemetery as a gravedigger. This type of work goes against his Rastafarian upbringing of not dealing with the dead, but he desperately needs the work to help his ailing mother, even though she rather he did not leave his village to do this kind of work. She is afraid he will end up like his father, who years ago went to the city to work and, without a word, never returned.

The author alternates chapters between Yejide and Darwin, describing their childhoods, their relationships with their mothers. Both Yejide’s grandmother and mother have passed. Her grandmother, Catherine, passed when she was a child and she was never close to her mother. Her mother seems very angry and resistant to her place in life. It’s her mother, however, who tells Yejide of their relationship to the dead, which is the opposite of Darwin’s beliefs. Her mother tells her that the living must take care of the dead, so they can be at peace and in turn, the dead take care of the living.

After her mother dies, the gift of seeing and communicating with the dead, that has been shared by generations of women in her family, is passed on to Yejide, who like her mother, is resistant to receiving this gift. She can see people’s light or energy; she can see death. As she receives this gift, she travels to a cemetery and sees a young man alone in this cemetery and he sees her.

Darwin struggles with working in the graveyard among so many dead. His first grave digging assignment is difficult, emotionally and spiritually, taking something from his spirit. He feels he is betraying his beliefs. He also thinks he’s seeing things as well that aren’t real, but he’s not sure – a young woman at the gates one evening, a Rasta man walking through the grounds and also fresh graves that his crew did not dig.

Yejide travels to Darwin’s cemetery to make arrangements to bury her mother. Darwin is summoned to escort her to her family’s plot – they recognize each other immediately and feel a connection. He worries about getting involved with her, while having questions about her and also about the mysterious events happening at the cemetery.

Darwin soon finds out about the fresh-looking graves in the cemetery – bodies are delivered to the cemetery at night for his crew to bury and they are also grave robbers. As Darwin is pulled into this scheme, he gets in trouble with his crew of gravediggers, who will have no problem getting rid of a young guy from the country that they believe no one will miss.

Darwin and Yejide find closure and understanding of their family’s pasts as they find a path toward each other. The language of the novel, the storytelling, which was always oral in my family at least, is familiar and refreshing to read in book form. The ending literally choked my up, so, please give When We Were Birds a read. I’m looking forward to see what the author, Ayanna Lloyd Banwo, comes up with next! And for the Trini’s reading this post – please give this novel a read and let me know what you think!!

Side comment, I had to publish from my phone today, due to a wifi outage at home. So, couldn’t do all the optics I wanted.

September 30, 2022

Day Zero by C. Robert Cargill

I found this apocalyptic sci-fi title on a Harper Collins retweet. I read the description of this nanny robot in the shape of an anthropomorphic tiger. Ok, interesting. In Day Zero by C. Robert Cargill, this robot has to choose between staying with the child he cares for or joining liberated robots. This novel is also a prequel to the author’s Sea of Rust that I intend to read.

The novel also piqued my interest because some time ago I read a compilation of short stories called Robot Uprisings that had one story that was similar (“We Are All the Misfits Toys in the Aftermath of the Velveteen War” by Seanan McGuire) about smart, self-learning robots designed to care for, educate and be companions to children and develop with the child it serves. When a robot revolt occurs, these bots took the children – Not a good idea to trust robots (A.I.) to the point where they are left with themselves and the impressionable ones they serve.

This sci-fi, Day Zero, is narrated by Pounce, a zoo-modeled nanny robot, who takes care of 8-year-old Ezra Reinhart. As mentioned above, Pounce is also anthropomorphic, a thinking, feeling robot. One day, given the task to pack boxes away, Pounce finds his own factory box in the attic and learns that when Ezra is old enough, a nanny robot will no longer be needed, hence why the family kept the box. Leaving Ezra and his family hadn’t occurred to Pounce. He’s always believed himself as being part of the Reinhart family, not some returnable object.

Ezra’s parents, Pounce’s owners, are well-meaning but oblivious and disconnected from the reality of the outside world because they live in a very small, affluent, gated community. They are not prepared for what is about to happen.

Pounce also has to deal with Ezra learning at his school that a robot, named Isaac, has been liberated and allowed to establish his own city, Isaactown, asking other robots to join him. Pounce tries to reassure Ezra that he will not leave the family. Pounce does not quite understand why some robots want to be free – he loves working for his family and wants to continue to do so. The Reinhart’s other robot, a maid-bot called Ariadne, asks if Pounce wouldn’t rather have the choice to work for his family instead of being bought from a manufacturer for that purpose? Pounce thinks about this.

There is unrest among humans about robots’ and A.I. place in society, replacing the function of people and being regarded as near-equals. The unrest leads to protests, violence and ultimately to an explosive EMP (electromagnetic pulse) attack on Isaactown, irreparably damaging all A.I. in that city.

Pounce soon has to make a choice between humans and his own kind. The explosive EMP destroyed all robots is Isaactown, which then sets off a trigger program for a group of robots to retaliate. Before all robots can be shut down, this program goes further, disabling all robot kill switches that prevent them from harming humans and asks them to choose – join a rebellion or be shut down by humans.

Pounce chooses to protect Ezra. Most robots, however, including the maid-bot Ariadne, choose to join the rebellion, uploading their memories and their will to a collective drive, with a promise of being one thought and part of a memory collective, and if destroyed during the fight, they would be downloaded to rebuilt models afterwards – reborn. Yeah, reading this made me skeptical of this collective controlling thing, whatever it was – they were basically trading one master to serve another and this master wanted them to kill. Kill all humans AND also all robots who refused to join them.

This leaves Pounce and young Ezra literally on the run for their lives. They find alliances along the way, both human and robot, while Pounce discovers he is more than just a nanny. This was an exciting fast-paced read, filled with seriously descriptive and entertaining urban battles, with insightful commentary on free will, loyalty, true friendship and love between robots and humans. The exchanges between Ezra and Pounce are touching, showing the bond and respect they have for each other. Day Zero by C. Robert Cargill – just a great read! Hope you check it out.

November 28, 2021

Corporate Gunslinger by Doug Engstrom

Well, it’s the holiday season and I thought I’d select a read that gives you something to think about, a possible near future where spending money, leading to debt, could change your life in a bad way. The novel, Corporate Gunslinger by Doug Engstrom, is a dystopian science fiction, thriller that takes place 40 – 60 years from now. The author has taken Gladiator, Hunger Games, the pistol duel and the gunfight and rolled it into one. This story is the corporation run amok, where the cycle of business and profit overshadow and outweigh the individual, the human being. It makes you wonder, where are we headed?

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May 26, 2021

Two Titles – The Wife Upstairs

The Wife Upstairs: A Novel by Racheal Hawkins was on several recommended reading lists for 2021, described as having a twist on Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre – so that drew me in. This is also Hawkins’ first adult novel. While doing a search for this title, I found there was also a 2020 psychological thriller of the same title by Freida McFadden that also looked interesting and got excellent ratings on Amazon. So I decided why not read them both for one post. So, here are two titles about the wife upstairs.

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October 28, 2020

The DARK DESCENT of Elizabeth Frankenstein by Kiersten White

A Halloween treat.

What drew me to this book? The author, Kiersten White, in an interview on WNYC, talked about publishing this retelling of Frankenstein on the 200th anniversary of the original publication. She also talked about the time period that Mary Shelley lived; being an author was basically an all-male profession as well as the protagonists in their stories. In the introduction of the original book, Shelley’s husband downplays her contribution thinking that people would prefer to read the book if it was written jointly with himself and Lord Byron – Even Mary Shelley herself shifts focus from herself, complimenting her husband encouraging her to write the story.

So Kiersten White decided to pay tribute to Mary Shelley by bringing the women to the forefront of this story. While asking the questions, “How much of who we are is shaped by those around us?” and “What happens when everything we are depends on someone else?”, White says she found the her story in Elizabeth Lavenza – a little girl gifted to a little boy, that feels this boy is the center of her life and, unwittingly, helps create a monster.

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